The Black Thursday 43
B-17 F-120-BO, Serial No. 42-30831, Nickname: Lazy Baby, 8th Air Force, 305th Group, 364th Squadron Mission: Bombing of ball bearing plant in Schweinfurt, Germany On October 14th, 1943, an American B-17 bomber was forced to make an emergency landing in Birseck. Of the ten-person crew, navigator Donald Rowley was the only one to lose his life. The 22-year-old US Army Air Force lieutenant was thus one of the 590 crew members killed in the fatal air raid on the German ball bearing factory in Schweinfurt. That was October 14th, 1943, the heaviest defeat of the 8th US Air Force in the bomb war over Europe. The air force and anti-aircraft defence of Nazi Germany was at the height of its strength, whereas the allied fighter plane technique wasn’t yet at the point of being able to escort their bombers throughout the whole flight. A hair-raising 77 of the 291 B-17 bombers used did not return from "Mission 115" or returned to England in the form of scrap iron. Of the 305th Bomber Group’s 15 machines to which «Lazy Baby» belonged, only three weathered the German hail of anti-aircraft bullets. Afterwards, in view of the fiasco, it was called the World War’s US Army Air Force "Black Thursday". As far as the crew of the "Lazy Baby" is concerned, Lieutenant Edward Dienhart's crew had every reason to remember their internment in Switzerland with pleasure and gratitude. Navigator Rowley, who was mortally wounded and covered in blood after a flak hit over Aachen, instructed Dienhart on how to escape to Switzerland, using his last ounce of strength. After the remaining crew had thrown out all the deadweight that was not nailed down to the severely damaged aircraft, the pilot, after circling around several times, succeeded in making an emergency landing on a potato field next to the Schlatthof at about 3.30 p.m. – an aeronautical masterpiece, even by today's standards. Immediately afterwards, curious civilians and military personnel began flocking to the wrecked aircraft. Among the numerous stories concerning the emergency landing, that of Leo Brodmann, a farmer from Ettingen, stands out. He stole a dismantled Browning machine gun from the crash site as a "souvenir", buried it at his place, escaped the extensive searches and interrogations of the authorities, and didn’t take it out again until 1987. The "Lazy Baby" survivors themselves spent the rest of the war in an internment camp in Adelboden and returned to the USA in 1945.
Lazy Baby
